How I Met Your Highness
by MissPixel
Summary: Disillusioned king-in-training Marth plus wayward rogue-princess Zelda. Upper-crust political affairs have a way of bringing people together.
1. Hell is High Society

I.

_Hell is High Society_

Marth Lowell flashed charming smiles, raised his glass in too many toasts to count and forced his eyes to twinkle, and in his opinion, he was doing a damn good job of it. Keeping his good cheer was an exercise of character; for some idiot reason, he could say anything, do anything, and still the tiny piece of gold on his head made everyone have to call him Highness and race to kiss his feet. He was realizing more and more that the things he'd done as a teenager were going to define him for the rest of his life.

Be gracious and smile, said the snob in him. Act like a well-mannered tittering fool, and people will exclaim about what a lovely young man you are and then give you trade agreements.

Rebuilding Altea had always seemed like something that would have its own reward. The war and the fighting and the washing the blood out of his clothing every day was the just prelude to kingly duties, holding conferences and treaty meetings, writing legislations, speaking on that awful podium in front of the castle, but none of it was _work_. It was the thing to do, the only way to see his people and his country become the place of miracles he remembered through the rose-glass of childhood.

And that was supposed to be _it. _Mind your country, mind your business. Chasing some wonderful, naïve ideal of glory and restoration was a burden enough without everything suddenly becoming so… public.

Waves of toadying people in thick robes bowed at him no matter how much he waved his hands and said it wasn't necessary, and the people who knew him seemed to greatly outnumber the people he knew. Prince Marth Lowell of Altea, Son of Cornelius IV, Blood of Anri Flowing Through His Veins, twenty this year – one of those "boy kings" that had finally turned out right – was a celebrity. An icon with a crown. He had no idea where it had come from, and he wasn't sure he liked it.

Just a few years ago, he'd wanted this like no other thing. It had been like some unreachable thing on a pedestal, this _royalty_… it felt like only a faint recollection after the war replaced it in his memory, but he could still smell the rich mahogany and remember the feel of furs and silk. Otherwise it was just a concept, the thing that kept him fueled with rage and revenge like he thought he should be. He'd endured shame and exile, raised an army, rebelled, _killed_ people just to be returned his birthright, but even that seemed to have been without substance. A concept, the glorious fantasy of a sixteen-year-old who'd had too much sadness in his life _not_ to pursue the one thing he could still hold on to. He'd known all along that he wasn't being too honest with himself about what he really wanted out of all that war and bloodshed, but being thrust into a reality full of people who talked for hours but had nothing to say was ruder of an awakening than he preferred.

Marth excused himself with a smile and a very wooden laugh, pretending to spot someone he knew across the room, and extracted himself from the circle of foreign dignitaries that had been occupying him for the better part of the hour. They saw him off with smiles and bows and exclamations of praise, and he wanted to throw up.

The ballroom was full of beautiful women, and it was a testament to who-knew-what that the old crones looked just like the thirty-year-olds and the children were decked out in jewelry and makeup worthy of ladies three times their age. Some of them had hair piled down to their knees, penciled-in eyebrows, waists so thin he could put his fist around them. The one and only time he'd dared to comment to a Macedonian ambassador that he had a beautiful wife, he'd been told that that was his thirteen-year-old little girl, thank you very much, and then – to his horror – that if His Highness wanted to spend some time alone with the lady, he should just say the word. God help all the deluded fools in that room that dressed up their daughters like courtesans and paraded them around like war trophies… hell with that, God help _him_. Sometimes he couldn't even believe he was actually a part of this crazy society.

His general and chief retainer had nudged him as he'd exited the carriage more than three hours ago, warned him with a sly "go get 'em" wink that all the single women came to these things, daughters and sisters and mistresses – goddesses in glowing dresses who would apparently kill one another for a spot on his arm. But quite honestly, that was where he felt he differed from most of his contemporaries: he was here for business, because, sad as it sounded when he thought about it, business was all he'd ever known. Base camp during those years of nomadic preparation had been a meeting place of tactics and battle plans; as his comrades laughed around the fire and cuddled together, talked and laughed and grew closer to one another, he'd sat alone, weighed down by all his misfortunes, dreading the day his fear and fatigue would catch up to him and convince him that he was doing the wrong thing. His men had chased women, his women had chased them back, and all the while he had stood in the background, a troubled orphan thinking about war and war only.

It was only lately, closer and closer to his twentieth birthday, that he felt the cold nipping at his heels. Was he even _capable_ of connecting to people? The excuses seemed neverending, and they convinced him too easily. Next year, he always told himself, next year or the year after, when Altea was really _truly_ back on its feet, then he'd settle all his personal issues and find himself someone to settle down with. Right now, of course, he couldn't possibly stray from his responsibilities, not when his country needed him so badly, but... someday there would be someone to share his secrets, laugh and cry with him, someone who wouldn't care that he was damaged, or broken, or whatever else.

A loud voice to his left jolted him back to his senses. He was trapped – a paunchy man in a long furry tunic was coming his way, and he was flanked on his other side by a gaunt-looking ambassador. Duke Akanea and Magistrate Talis: one of them was bound to shriek in his ear about tariffs, and the other had the look of someone with human development woes. Both the last things he wanted to discuss.

The stone fountain was the nearest cover; he ducked quickly behind it and scouted out his retreat. The refreshment tables were to the left; he could knock them over and create a distraction, or he could take a hostage and demand they let him out immediately…

The stained-glass door behind the tables would have to suffice. He pushed off on one heel and darted as inconspicuously as possible around columns and pillars, quietly pushed down on the handle and let himself out with as little noise as possible. He shut the door behind him as silently as he could, and when it was safe, loosed the ragged sigh he'd been bottling up all evening, resting his head against the red glass and attempting to calm his rapidly beating heart.

So this was to be his fate. Getting his boots licked by those less powerful than he was – until the time came when his was no longer the most promising, the most dangerous nation, by which time he would be so broken by this godforsaken cult of manners and fake smiles that he would be the one doing the bootlicking without a second thought. When would it end? Someday, a year from now, two years from now, someday…

"I was going to tell you to get your own balcony," came a voice behind him, "but hell… you don't look so good either."

Marth was too tired to be startled by the sudden voice. He should have taken this into account before throwing himself out here; such a tactically perfect hiding place could not have gone unnoticed.

The girl behind him was sitting against the railing, knees drawn up to her chest, an untouched wine glass sitting by her side. Her eyes were blue, her hair blonde, and by God, she was so beautiful that he felt like he should be on his knees kissing her hands or something, and yet all he could think was _please, don't make me go back there, because if you tell me to leave, I can't say no_…

"You can stay," she said finally, and his heart jumped with relief, "but don't expect me to talk, okay?"

...

A/N: Modestly retouched, from Chapter I. Try to ignore my "look we met on a balcony escaping from a stuffy party" plot device.


	2. Misery in Common

II.

_Misery in Common_

In all the years she had been escaping onto it, the sanctity of Zelda's balcony had never seen the touch of another human. Thus, when it was rudely violated by this nervous-looking man in blue, she felt the impact hard and unwelcome in her gut, like a foot in her stomach… like someone had punched her in the soul.

She wanted to yell at him to leave, and when she said yell she meant scream, which really meant throw a tantrum, but when it got to that point it usually became violent spellcasting. This was _her_ unhappy place. The balcony was her friend, a blessed sanctuary that had saved her from madness among smiling fools; right now she was busy moping and didn't have time for heartwarming conversations with handsome strangers.

Come time to ponder, Zelda couldn't say why she _didn't_ chase him off her balcony in the first place. Maybe because with the way he looked like he'd just escaped the gallows, it felt like sending him back through that door might be akin to tying the noose herself.

She hadn't gotten a good look at his face, but it had seemed nice enough – he was decked out like some warrior-duke, blue silk and silver trim, long dramatic cape and expensive-looking sword. The battle-ready edge was nice, although the nobleman thing lost him big points.

But he had blue hair. That was kind of cool.

"Thank you," he breathed, with the kind of relief one normally saw from cancer survivors, "thank you. I swear you won't even know I'm here."

Easy for him to say. Even if she looked away and tried to zone back to her happy place where lacy undergarments were not itching at every joint, there was always that nagging temptation to steal a glance, see if that face was _actually_ as pretty as she'd thought, see if he actually looked _more_ miserable than she did. Working up a nice mutual ignore would not be easy.

He was leaning on the white marble railing. She recognized the trained posture (they drilled it into you when you were young; you tried to get rid of it but by then it was like a tattoo), the broad-slouched shoulders, the regal lilt, the defeated slump. Just about everything about him was disturbingly familiar, most notably the world-weariness – the pressure of being a dress and a shiny headpiece and a cute face, smiling at all the right times, making the same Goddessdamn first impression fifty times in a row. She'd been propositioned by no fewer than fifteen strangers already, nine three times her age, six with wives standing mere feet away. It was overwhelming.

She only noticed that his eyes were blue because he'd caught onto her staring and had begun to stare back. Pathetic: she was the one who'd told him not to talk, and here she was ogling him like she was expecting him to. But it wasn't awkward, for some reason, the silence. It felt natural, like mutual curiosity.

"You can sit down if you want," she said, indicating a spot to her right with a nod of her head.

The blue-haired noble came and sank down next to her without another word, and Zelda rested her head back against a hard marble banister.

It wasn't that bad, honestly, having someone there whom she actually didn't feel she needed to impress – which was strange, since people didn't usually get to looking like that without going under the knife for vanity's sake, and she usually didn't hesitate to show off when the boy lords came calling. He was just there, doing nothing, needing nothing. More stuffy dukes could stand to be so silent.

"What are you in for?" she asked, tilting her head to the side. It was probably just another excuse to look at him, but the weak smile she got was worth it.

"Running a country," he replied dully. "You?"

"Having the wrong damn parents at the wrong damn time."

"Ah. Born into it," he nodded with familiarity. She noticed that his eyes were not just superficially sad, but somewhat drained, witness to a lot of disappointment. "There are worse things. Nothing comes to mind, but there are, I know it."

"I guess," Zelda replied, craning her head and looking out between the bars of the railing. "I was actually just thinking that if it did start raining on top of everything, I was going to have to throw myself off this balcony. Maybe with some epic Shakespearean words of parting."

"Please don't… I would have to save you."

Zelda felt a wry smile bubbling up. "Have to? Don't feel inclined to, you know, help me out of the kindness of your heart."

"Actually, I meant I wouldn't do a good job of it. I'm afraid my reflexes have been dulled by small talk."

The smile turned into very sardonic grin. "Don't be daft. With you talking like that, I'd at least extend the courtesy of taking you with me."

For the first time in a very long while, it seemed, the cold air shook with laughter, and she was shocked. Zelda Harkinnian, hater of party-talk, pouter extraordinaire, admit defeat and have fun at one of her father's balls? Who was this demon-man who could make her laugh?

His chuckle became a sudden groan, and the blue-haired stranger's face went into his hands, like he'd just remembered something terrible. "Oh God, please tell me I didn't…"

"What?" Zelda said immediately, "What happened?"

"Nothing," he said mournfully, "I… had a faux pas with Baron Golding."

Etiquette lessons and name memorization checkered through her brain. Baron Golding, unmarried, daughter Carrie Golding, an incorrigible flirt if she recalled. Subject not to be broached in conversation with the Goldings: Carrie's curious lack of a mother.

Zelda frowned. "Baron Golding's the fat one, right?" The blue-haired nobleman gave her a skeptical look, and she felt another giggle coming on. "Right, more specific… I think I saw him in some kind of horrible purple leopard-print silks. And a funny hat with a macaroni in it. How's that?"

He loosed a dry chuckle. "Yes, that's the one, the macaroni gave it away. They all start to bleed together after a while."

"Yeah, I know what you mean… but _ugh_, Goddesses, how can you stand that man? He's like a teakettle with a bad attitude."

"If I could _stand_ any of them, I wouldn't be out here."

Good point. He turned to her with a helpless frown; his hair flopped adorably into his eyes, and it made her want to hug him. "It's like drowning, you know? It's that same choking feeling… these people are vampires."

"Same wavelength, my friend. Same wavelength. Now, tell me what you did to the Golding-beast."

His face went back into his hands. "I told him he had a beautiful wife."

"Wife?" Zelda asked. "Baron Golding isn't married."

She felt her face suddenly contort into something that felt like half delight and half disgust. "Oh, no. Now that _is_ awkward. Heh."

"I don't think I've ever wanted to die quite so much."

Zelda cackled. "Was the daughter nearby, the little tart?"

He quirked his eyebrows at her. "Tart? Seemed to me the father was the one offering her out… God, it makes my skin crawl to even say that…"

"Don't you know, that's _Carrie_," Zelda said with a mocking lilt, tossing her hair theatrically and thrusting her shoulder up with a sniff, "the apple of her daddy's eye." She laughed shortly. "Don't even ask how far _she's_ been around the block. Trust me, she's a rich little floozy if there ever were one, and her father had very little to do with it."

"She's _thirteen_," he groaned.

Zelda sighed. "Comes with the social circle." She threw a second glance at him – still the little excuses to look at him, what was going on? "Present company excluded, if you go for the whole political correctness thing."

The blue-haired noble waved it off like the very idea was some kind of poisonous fume. "Hardly. I wouldn't mind if the word 'politics' was struck permanently from the dictionary."

She was laughing. The air was warm, her skin felt tingly and alive, her blood was pumping and there was a lot of smiling going on… too much smiling, too much happiness for one of Daddy's stuffy business parties. Something needed to be done.

Her companion turned to her, and she was already there, smirking in anticipation, gut aching pleasantly as her out-of-shape diaphragm readjusted. Strange and wonderful as it seemed that their moods seemed to be changing as one, it was nice to see a smile, even if it looked out of practice. Without that dull, heartbreaking pain in his eyes he actually looked her age.

"Not that I have any desire at all to repeat the Golding fiasco," he said, and Zelda loosed another cackle, "but… princess? That's my best guess."

"Urgh," Zelda replied, twisting around and mock-banging her head against the banister. The gold-gilded title sometimes did really make her want to smash her own brains out. He chuckled, and if she hadn't known better she could have sworn there was recognition in it, of the 'know what you mean' kind. Again she wondered who he was.

"Sorry," he said, smiling, "you don't have to tell me. And honestly, if you're thirteen under there then I don't want to know…"

"Hah," she laughed, "no, you were right the first time."

She pointed with a sarcastic flourish at the tiny diadem clamping down around her head, that cursed little tiara that she couldn't take off for fear of not being able to get it back right and upsetting her mother. Her companion squinted in the darkness, leaning closer, their shoulders nestling together.

Zelda's body tensed up as she caught a waft of something like sword powder and sandalwood, war and peace – the thing he was, the thing he'd been forced into, and the thing he should be, the grace that seemed natural to him…

No, stop while you're ahead, Zel – when was the last time you got yourself interested in some sweet, sensitive, nice-smelling guy who _didn't_ turn out to be married or gay or celibate? Stop while you're ahead and skip all that awful disappointment…

"That's beautiful," she heard him say as he furrowed fine blue eyebrows, "rose gold and leaf. Maybe what it stands for isn't the greatest, but… it does suit you."

Zelda forced herself to stop breathing, unwillingly shutting out the enthralling scent. Do _not_ sniff the air. That would be incredibly weird.

"Strange, right?" she said with a short laugh, "So small you can't see it, but it weighs a few pounds shy of a wild boar…"

"It is hard to pick out in the dark," he agreed, and then shaking his head with a smile, "It's the same kind of gold as your hair."

"Thank you," she said automatically, and laughed at her words as they came out of her mouth, because that sure as hell had not been any kind of conscious compliment – but the strange thing was that it had _sounded_ like a compliment. And she felt warm and glowy in her stomach, as if someone had just told her she was pretty.

He looked at her sidelong with a funny crooked smile. "You sound like you know this scene a lot better than you'd like to."

_Much_ better than she'd like to. By now she'd take the farm life, living in the tiniest of cottages and living hand-to-mouth every day. At least it was honest.

"I usually complain less. Out loud, at least. I'm really more of the evil-glare type."

He laughed. "Come here often, then?"

"Worse… I live here."

He looked truly surprised, and Zelda gave a long-suffering nod, feigning ritual suicide. Now she'd done it; here came the rest of the fun stuff about that, the part where he started being all formal and apologizing because he hadn't _known_ she was supposed to be his hostess… Goddesses, she hated this place. She hated what it did to nice guys.

"I didn't know there was a Hylian heiress," he said, "King Harkinnian – doesn't really… uh…"

The sentence hung unfinished in the air, _doesn't talk about you. _It's like you don't exist, Zel. He says he loves you as you are, but really, he'd like you better if you weren't such a pain to marry off. Either be more feminine, be the sweet marriageable princess, or just be a boy and get it done with; don't be in between.

The familiar bubble of bitterness was welling up behind her eyes again. Her companion didn't seem to have suddenly grown a sense of stuffy etiquette, which was a relief, but damn it, now her father was in the mix too, and she'd just as soon ignore him for once.

"Are you kidding?" she said, hearing the sarcasm loud and clear in her own voice, "Daddy dear, talk about his disappointment of a kid to people he wants to impress? It's bad enough all of Hyrule knows about little Princess Zelda, running away when her nursemaid isn't looking to go out and play in the dirt; I can't even _imagine_ what that would do to his precious reputation if it got out that the troublemaker's next in line for the throne…"

Even she could tell that she'd done a terrible job at disguising the pitiful hurt in her tone. The sarcasm didn't even begin to cover it, and she knew that her damn sweet, sensitive, married, gay, celibate new friend knew it too.

The resentment was like a cloud over her head. She couldn't think like this, looking into those sad blue eyes and feeling the cold and hearing Daddy's booming voice in her ears… she closed her eyes and turned her head towards the blue-haired stranger, opening her lungs to that wonderful scent, that iron-and-incense miracle aroma that cleared her mind and made her think of better things.

"Zelda, huh?" she heard the noble's soft voice from beside her head, and felt a little tingle in her skin at hearing him say her name. It sounded good in his voice, clear and delicate, as if the word were precious to him. He said everything like that.

"Yeah," she sighed, not caring that she was too close to him. "That's me. Zel, royalty's nightmare."

"… I'm Marth."

Etiquette lessons and memorization to the rescue. Marth Lowell, unmarried, elder sister Ellis, orphaned young. Prince, first general and sole ruler of Altea, fastest-growing market economy in the Eastern world… Zelda's father was terrified of this man; she couldn't believe _this_ was whom she'd been talking to this whole time. She didn't much care either. If he could talk to her without stiffening up, then by Nayru, she could do it too.

"Zelda."

The tingle again. How delightful. "Mm-hmm."

"You're sniffing."

Discovered. "… oh."

He wore a bemused smile. "Allergies? Skunk?"

"Yeah, it's… those things."

She could see the quirked eyebrows already, but she wasn't ready to keep her distance yet. Words wafted to her mouth and floated merrily past her internal filter. "It's just… you smell really good."

All her mind could think, after the fact, was _why?_ Why abandon your good sense, why let your mouth blabber these embarrassing, uncalled-for things? Zelda felt the color rising in her cheeks – but how could she not have mentioned it? Nobles smelled like perfume, warriors smelled like blood and sweat, and he was so wonderfully _neither…_

"Really," he said, nothing more than amused. "Like what?"

"I dunno," she muttered, "like… fragrant wood. And metal, like sword powder. You know."

During the ensuing silence, he looked around at her incredulously. "Sword powder?"

Zelda's feeble attempts at evading the statement sounded more pathetic than they had in her head. "You know I've also had my fair share of run-ins with Baron Golding. Want to hear?"

"Don't change the subject. Maybe I should have read more about Hyrulian customs, but – how much exactly do you 'play in the dirt'?"

She scowled and tried to think of a way not to answer. She'd forgotten to add 'chauvinist' to the list of everything that could go wrong; she couldn't forget all those cursed diplomats inside whom she'd thought were all-right guys till it came out exactly what they thought of a woman's role in the household. The nerve of some of these backward pigs. She'd have slugged a few of them if it weren't for her desire not to be disowned.

"… are you going to run away?" she asked finally. Skeptically.

"Run?" he echoed, "Unless I wanted to go back in there, there's nowhere _to_ run. Try me."

She winced. "Let's just say embroidery isn't my thing. Well, I guess you could call it embroidery, but with less needles and more rapiers. And more slashing than poking. Well, there's poking too, but…" She shook her head and hit the reset button. "I mean, I'm no decorated fencer, but… come at me in a dark alley and you'll wish you hadn't."

There's a good way to introduce your weird habits, Zel, said the voice of reason in her head, _threaten _him. If he isn't already a sexist, you've made him one for sure.

"Cool," came his voice next to her.

Marth was doing that thing again, that strangely attractive thing where he looked like the cute teenager Zelda wanted him to be. She started grinning uncontrollably. Such relief. Not a chauvinist, not married… gay was still up in the air, though; she still couldn't quite believe that someone that pretty could be into girls.

"Yeah, well," she said, leaning back and stretching, putting her hands behind her head, "saving your kingdom and all wouldn't be much good if you didn't know which end of a sword to hold."

"I think I need to spar with you," Marth chuckled. His smile looked so much less rusty than it had before, like it was coming naturally. "It'll be like a kingdom-savers party. Private invitation only."

"Anyone else you know saved a kingdom recently?"

"No. Well, that General from Tellius apparently killed a goddess, but I don't much care for him… I guess it's just us."

"Well, good," Zelda smirked. "You could probably learn a few things from the master. You know, if you can keep up."

Marth grinned. "Oh, I'm not going down without a fight, Zel. You better fight fair."

"You wound me. Of course I'll fight fair. I won't even use my secret weapon."

"What's that?"

She stuck out her tongue. "I'm not falling for that. You'll just have to wait till our kingdom-savers party to find out."

Marth had scarcely opened his mouth to reply when the sound of voices close by broke the silence on their balcony. Someone was nosing around the buffet-table end of the ballroom, shouting somewhat above the accepted volume for King Harkinnian's gatherings.

"Prince Lowell," called the disembodied voice, and Zelda's heart sank.

She 'hmph'd as the sound faded, turning to Marth with a long-suffering smirk. "The parasites are calling."

"I know, I heard," he groaned. "It's all right, he probably won't look out here – "

The door opened with a noisy creak, and an unwelcome burst of fluttery string-quartet fluff floated through the open frame. Both heads turned, and Zelda wondered if Marth was as ready as she was to perform some spectacular ass-kicking on whomever had disturbed them.

"Milord, there you are," hissed the intruder, another fancypants in red silk and decorative armor. Plumed and crested too; he must be a knight. Zelda imagined him with a stab wound. "This doesn't look good, Milord. I have people lining up to speak with you."

Marth shot him an evil look. The knight, evidently worried that his inquirer in the grand hall was getting impatient, glanced back into the ballroom and gave his lord one last pleading glare. "Look, you _know_ you're supposed to be in there socializing. I'm just the messenger."

With a heavy sigh, Marth waved him off, much to the man's delight, and began to get up.

"You're kidding, right?" Zelda snorted.

"That's Kain," he explained, nodding his head at the knight slipping back into the room, "I shouldn't leave him to deal with the bloodsuckers. He doesn't deserve it."

Zelda gave another sardonic laugh. "You are a more magnanimous one than I. My retainers only _wish_ I'd be that nice to them."

Marth chuckled, stretching his arms. Almost like an afterthought, he glanced back down at her and feigned a patronizing glower.

"I'm holding you to your word, you know. Altea's just two hours by horse."

Zelda felt a little bubble of delight in her stomach and played along, folding her arms and knitting her brows. "Two hours, you say? Oh, I'll be there." She smiled and nodded. "Bye, Marth. Don't let the evil socialite vampires bite."

She watched him walk to the door, watched the lazy regal stride as he peevishly adjusted his coronet. She hoped the sadness wouldn't come back. Her sadness was the annoyed, good-natured kind, but his seemed… deeper. Corrosive. She hated seeing grief that she knew wasn't just a bad mood, that she knew wouldn't just go away with time.

"Marth," she heard herself say, and hesitated only a moment when he turned around. "Did I cheer you up?"

He grinned a cute gleaming smile, completely natural. "Infinitely."

For a second she saw someone mischievous, someone sweet and playful, a shadow of the Marth that might have been before the war. Maybe war had changed Zelda too; she remembered being silly and giggling once upon a time… what would have happened if antebellum Zelda and antebellum Marth had met on the balcony, before all the fighting had given them so much reason to mistrust?

Marth was scarcely out of sight before the desire clawed at her to go inside. She didn't even care if she wasn't wanted in that stuffy old room, if Daddy wanted her out of sight so she wouldn't make the wrong impression on one of his pompous old allies. Why spend the evening alone when there was sympathy and conversation simply _waiting_ for her to rescue him?

But what would be the use, she reasoned, before her overzealous legs could take her further. It would be bad form, even for her, to spend the entire night with Prince Altea in full view of the public, smiling like a fool and cracking sarcastic jokes – not to mention Daddy wouldn't approve at all. Unless of course he saw the opportunity and hatched some evil plan to get them together; Zelda had known him to do that in years past… but anything with Harkinnian's name attached to it usually ended up humiliating to her but curiously beneficial to his own agenda.

Instead she got up, leaving her wine glass sad and full on the balcony, ripped her dress to the knee, threw her diamond-encrusted shoes over the edge, and swung her legs over the side of the railing. It was some twenty feet, but the grass was soft and she bent into a roll as she hit, and after half-assedly brushing at the green stains on her pink satin dress, she pinpointed the way to the stables to spend the rest of the night with her thoroughbred in the stable. Ian didn't have as much to say as most socialites, but the conversation was better.

Too bad there was no way to separate Marth Lowell from the toadies who wanted nothing more than to be in his good graces. It struck her that tonight might be the last opportunity in some time for her to seek him out – Daddy's parties were spaced out pretty scarcely. Next one would be two years from now, give or take a month, and that was much too long. And even though she knew it was bad form, clingy, poor social skill, whatever… she had a warm, giddy feeling that Prince Altea was going to be getting that visit from her a lot sooner than he'd intended.

...

A/N: I'll be completely ignoring canon as far as certain major events in Fire Emblem games go, but as for minor details, everything should be all right. Hopefully the way I have treated the seven-year war in the Zelda Universe (I think that's from Ocarina?) will start to make a *little* more sense later... right after it starts making sense to me.


	3. Altea to the East

III.

_Altea to the East_

Ian didn't seem to like the Altean countryside. Too many steep hills when Hyrule was all flat fields and cloud cover – here there were long stretches of sunny grass with no shade, tiny brooks with rocky bottoms that were deeper than they looked. His legs were long and he had the muscles of any pampered purebred, but Zelda had the feeling that in her nervousness she was pushing him a little too hard.

She gave him a friendly pat and then jabbed her heels into his flanks, looking quickly at the treeline when he threw his head back with an accusatory snort. All things considered, he needed the exercise anyway. And far be it from the truth that she was driving him like a slave because of her own selfish reasons… it was just that if she didn't hurry, she might not be able to see the rest of this blindingly beautiful countryside before the sun went down.

She didn't get it. Hadn't this country been in a war? One with torches and blood and swords and evil dragons? Her history tutors seemed to think it had been the costliest, most violent war the continent had seen in two hundred years, but where was the evidence?

There was something blue to the east, encrusted on the horizon like a coating of ice. Mountains to the west, huge and purple, behind her pine forests with shafts of light through gaps in the canopy, and in front of her the spires of what was shaping up to be a truly immense castle. Maybe it was her own ignorance that had painted a sooty, blasted wasteland in her head after hearing all those blow-by-blow battle accounts – dark dragon this, sword of destiny that – but truth be told, it was prettier than Hyrule on a summer afternoon; she'd take a tent in any one of these dark mountain caves over her prissy little luxury suite any day.

The spires in the distance became towers, and Zelda felt her heart thumping in her throat again. _I'm not nervous, so stop beating so fast because I'm not nervous, __**not**_.

It was a visit, a friendly drop-by because he had invited her and it would be rude not to accept. He wasn't drunk, wasn't incapacitated, so obviously he'd meant it. He'd sounded sincere, like he really did want to spend more time with her. It was common courtesy, the only sensible action, anyone would do the same. Just… perhaps not so spontaneously.

She would have loved to stop the guesswork, but her mind seemed to be on autopilot and it wasn't easy.

Ian was tossing his head and making angry noises, evidently trying to tell her that a rest stop was in order, and thinking that perhaps sitting down next to some serene rippling lake would force her to relax, she dismounted and set him out to graze… wherever, really, there was tall wild grass as far as the eye could see.

Next on the list, when sitting and staring did not work, was acceptance. She was going to see the prince of Altea because yes, she liked him. A lot. She liked him because he treated her like an equal, because he was kind and lonely like her, because he had beautiful sad eyes, and it was time to come to terms with it. And now she was riding her horse ragged across miles and miles of countryside to see him, all based on something he'd said on a whim, most likely in jest.

She was… _pursuing_ him. Goddesses, was she a pursuer now? A boy-chaser, an overzealous hussy? Ridiculous. There were a lot of things she didn't know, but she did know that she definitely wouldn't have gone through all this trouble if whatever she'd experienced on the balcony of Hyrule Castle had just been some stupid flirting game. She'd had those before, whelps with no substance making jokes at her and nudging her shoulder and flashing her bedroom eyes across the ballroom floor. They annoyed more often than flattered.

But again, _why_? Kindness, equality, sad eyes. Excuses, reasons, what was the difference? It wasn't _because_ of anything – although the eyes were nice. It didn't even seem possible, that she could without any pretenses or any predispositions just find someone attractive. First came talking, then came hanging out, then intimate vulnerable conversations and soul-searching, and then maybe kissing. There was no such thing as love at first sight. _Attraction_ at first sight. Love, attraction. Whatever.

"Hey, bottomless pit," she called, causing Ian to prick up his ears and look at her moodily. "Get your nose out of there. It's getting dark."

The horse wiggled his dappled grey ears and snorted. Getting to her feet, Zelda walked over to him and wrapped her arms around his neck. "Half an hour, maybe. Please? Altea stables are probably stocked full of alfalfa or whatever. You'll have a great time."

Another snort, and she felt Ian's wet nose brush her cheek. She laughed shortly and looked back up at the looming towers of Altea Castle behind the treeline. "Me? Yeah, I'll be fine. I just… well, you know. It'd be good if he remembered me. Otherwise we're going to have to pose as a couple of homeless wanderers and pretend this never happened."

A moment later they were cantering through the knee-high grass, wading through rivers and marshy streams and drawing ever closer to that growing greystone structure in the distance. She hated being alone in these huge rolling hills with someone who couldn't carry on a conversation. She hated not having someone there to tell her she was thinking too much, to act on her instincts and not worry so much about everything. Somehow, she missed her mother.

Altea's enormous castle town came up before Zelda could figure out what to do. She didn't know if Ian had had enough of her indecisiveness or was just heading towards the smell of royal horse food, but either way he simply stopped listening to her commands and adopted a steady trotting gait through the crowded cobblestone roads. She was the tallest object in the street, towering over market stalls as Ian nudged through the mob, but that seemed like the least of the reasons she was being ogled like a public exhibit.

The country was beautiful but the people were still damaged, and she was clearly a foreigner so why should they trust her? She felt positively naked behind her strange Hylian traveling cape, wished she had clothing that wasn't lined with silver and embroidered with intricate ivy designs, wished her hair didn't hang so damn perfect and glossy across her chest… typical; she couldn't fit in no matter where she went.

Maybe she should just ask someone about the quickest way to the castle gates. Would that make them think she was a terrorist or something? She ignored Ian's loud protests and turned him into the closest back alley, dismounted, and refrained from sitting down against the wall only when she realized that as bad as the smell was, what was on the ground was probably worse.

Zelda Harkinnian, heir to the throne of Hyrule, hiding in the deepest corners of Altea with her exasperated horse, pathetically terrified of people who had, until now, done nothing worse than look at her funny. Her parents would be proud.

"Don't look at me like that," she groused at Ian. "I know what I'm doing. Let's go do this."

The street was back, only she was walking this time, not towering over the masses, and the pang of unease was not as severe this time. And now that she thought about it, for the love of Nayru, why the worrying? She should face the wary crowd proudly, shoulders broad, neck long and straight. So she led a glossy horse. So she held herself like royalty and dressed in silk and chiffon among the dull burlap of the citizenry. She was a princess of Hyrule, a foreign dignitary paying an inconsequential one-day visit to a neighboring country, as people like that were known to do.

The spires were too tall to see now. There was nothing but grey stone as far up as she could crane her neck, old, mossgrown granite flecked with mold and ivy. History in stonework. She met the attendants at the gates; they knew who she was immediately, probably by the crest on Ian's bridle, which saved her a lot of paperwork and hurt feelings (it was evidence towards exactly how distracted she was when she didn't even blink twice at the presence of a Pegasus or two, no other word for it, in the stables where they took Ian – although in hindsight, they were damn cool, she had to wonder why Hyrule had never thought to loot a few winged horses from its neighbor during some war or other).

These people stared a lot for soldiers. Maybe Altea castle didn't get a lot of visitors? No, that wasn't it, how could it be so politically active and not have important guests all the time? She spotted the busybody redheaded knight from the party giving her the stinkeye, tried to scare him off by putting on her best regal scoffing face and failed pathetically. A shame she could only manage about five-four with her neck stretched up all the way, and was not going to be intimidating anything bigger than the ten-year-old kitchen boy… maybe high-heeled boots may not have been a bad idea after all. Five corridors, four staircases and two grand halls later, her escort left her in some kind of waiting room and bowed himself out telling her he'd notify the prince that she had arrived.

The clock's ticking snapped at her heels, and she revolved slowly on the spot, hands wrung before her as she tried to still her darting eyes on one tapestry or another, trying to decide whether or not it was worth it to make a run for the nearest mirror to make sure she didn't look like some weatherworn jungle-queen with twigs in her hair and dirt smudged on her cheeks…

The door opened too quickly behind her, her heart barrel-rolled and she turned, awkward, half-smiling, half-dazed – and then all the agonizing, all the stupid fretting and obsessive second-guessing, simply faded when she saw him slip out of the noisy conference room, perfect mouth stretched into a full-on grin like smiling was the only thing he knew.

The castle was nice, but its owner blew it all away. Maybe it was because of the poor lighting on the balcony, the time lapse between then and now, whatever… she'd thought she was putting him on some kind of pedestal, like what her mind did with food that wasn't really _that_ good or scenery that hadn't really been _that _pretty. This was not the case, and she loved surprises.

"You came!" Marth exclaimed. His voice was soft, confidentially hushed as he shut the door behind him, but she could hear the delicate quaver of delight beneath the controlled tone, the same buzzing feeling that she would now have to suppress.

"Of course." She curtsied melodramatically. "At your service. I told you I was going to take you down, didn't I?"

Another grin. "I didn't forget." He cast a glance around the circumference of the room. "I guess I'll just ask later about your lack of a protective duty… did you jump the wall or something?"

"You could say that." She gingerly rubbed her foot against the rough scar patches on her left shin. Careless. Good thing Hylian royalty inclined towards long skirts, or Daddy would have put her under lock and key a good five years ago. "Is that going to come back and bite me?"

"Only if they find you gone and come after me for kidnapping."

"They're used to it." She nodded at the door behind him. "Are you working?"

"I'm sitting in a room listening to people talk… yes, working," he said, glancing back with grimace. "I've got the king of Daein in there with trade agreements. It's not going well. We're both zombies; the only thing keeping us in there is the counselors and a lot of strong tea…"

King Pelleas of Daein. Unmarried, no siblings. No blood relation to previous king, but no one really cared because he was spearheading some kind of economic boom and nobody wanted to rain on that parade. 'A sweet boy,' according to Mother.

"Adjourn to tomorrow?" Zelda offered. "Sounds like you just need a break. Any country that wants your support that badly isn't going to cry about one extra day."

"No, but my cabinet will." Marth glanced back at the hated door. "It's too much trouble not to get all these drafts over with today. Besides, you still need to get settled in."

Now she was confused. "Settled in? How long am I staying?"

"A substantial few days," he replied, amused. "If I were to decide, that is. You didn't come all this way just to leave, did you?"

Zelda felt the happy glow swell in her stomach like a bonfire. She sounded so calm, so unruffled; it was probably better that he didn't know how disgustingly happy those simple words had just made her.

"Not at all. I didn't bring any of my things, though."

"That's fine… my sister left a lot of her wardrobe behind when she left for Cantha, most likely everything you'll need is still in her suite."

Princess Ellis of Altea. Recently married to… some Canthan emperor, she couldn't remember. Currently residing in the home of the husband. Zelda couldn't help wondering if this was another one of those unhappy political arrangements… she wouldn't put it past Ellis Lowell; the books made Marth's badass battle-priestess sister sound like a pretty selfless woman.

Zelda nodded. "Thanks. I'll go check it out, maybe show myself around the castle later on."

"Yourself?" He shook his head like it was a ridiculous notion. "Realistically, I'll be done with this in an hour at the most. There's a lot I can show you around the castle, after that maybe we'll eat out in the castle-town, or… something."

The corners of his mouth lifted suddenly in a bashful half-smile, the 'I can't believe I just said that' kind, and then his weight shifted to a wholly embarrassed stance of 'yeah, I did, and I meant it, so there' and after that he just looked like he didn't know quite what he wanted to say. She felt a wave of affection, cheered silently that she was not the only one playing outside her comfort zone.

"I'd like that," she said happily.

To her delight his cheeks reddened and he gave a helpless nod, shifting back into his original stance, leaning back relaxed against the wall. She relished that moment of awkward perfection as they just stood there in suspended conversation (it was just beginning to settle in that yes, this was happening, this dinner-and-a-stroll thing was actually _happening_), grinning at each other like fools who couldn't see anything else.

Absolutely nothing had been suave and smooth like the clever screenplay in her head. Nothing had 'gone well'. She'd been wondering fanatically about what she was going to do once she saw him, how she was going to act, all those carefully planned words and quips and clever phrases… all her plans had disappeared without a trace, but she didn't miss them. It ran like smooth machinery, this chance meeting, and it felt so weirdly _right_ that all she wanted to do was sit back and let things happen.

Marth started when the door cracked open behind him, and the expression on his face was nothing less than mortified as he turned around towards conference room he had obviously completely forgotten about. She should probably feel guilty for keeping him from what was probably a much more important political affair than her impromptu appointment, but honestly, it didn't bother her in the least.

Out of the room popped Zelda's old friend the red-crested knight. She was beginning to wonder if that piqued, nervous expression was just how his face looked all the time.

"Come on, Marth, don't make me deal with that Daein prettyboy alone," he whispered, before catching sight of Zelda at the far end of the room and pursing his lips in something that could almost, _almost_, be seen as amusement trying to pass as displeasure. "This is rather becoming a pattern, Milord, isn't it?"

Marth wasted no time kicking his trusted retainer hard in the shin. The playful undertone had not been well concealed, kind of an elder-sibling nudge about a schoolyard crush… better not to go there. Marth met Zelda's eyes with an embarrassed smile as the redhead bent over in pain, and began to shunt him back into the cracked door. "I'll be there in a bit. Go stall them."

"'In a bit?'" the knight pleaded. "Your Highness, he wants to talk about international corporate finance!"

"Kain… go back inside."

"I don't know anything about international corporate finance. Even the _finance adviser_ doesn't know anything about international corporate finance!"

Marth threw an incredulous glance at Zelda, and she laughed and waved it off. "Okay. A little pathetic, but go deal with your incompetent cabinet before they destroy your country."

Marth grimaced apologetically, but just as quickly the smile and hopeful tone returned. "Then I'll see you later tonight, Zzz… princess?"

Zelda blinked. Zzzprincess.

A traitorous blush nearly crept to his cheeks again, but with admirable composure he swept around and pulled Kain back from where he stood half-in and half-out of the conference room, directing him towards her with a nudge. "Right. Princess Hyrule will be staying in Ellis's rooms. You know where those are."

"Yes. I'll show her there. My suggestion for the conference, Milord, is that since you two know much better what you're talking about than do your consultants, perhaps you could talk circles around them and adjourn early under the illusion that you've actually gotten something done?"

Zelda chuckled. "Sad when the figureheads know more about fiscal policy than the advisers, isn't it? Have fun."

Her escort turned and began down the hallway. Marth turned back to her once more before sliding open the door, and this time waited till Kain had well cleared the corridor before addressing her. Without strangers it seemed infinitely more special, this moment of secret talking with prying ears in every direction. A quiver shot down her spine as she leaned closer to catch the words, as she savored the feeling of being in a foreign place with foreign people and somehow not being the slightest bit scared.

"Enjoy the suite, Zelda," he said, low-voiced and smiling. "You're going to have fun here. I promise.

...

A/N: Anyone else a fan of Pelleas from Radiant Dawn? Anyone? I totally just made up the part where he's still king of Daein.


	4. Interlude

IV.

_Interlude_

Like the dutiful ambassador she was, Zelda smoothed out her dirty gown, pushed down every quavering wave of excitement that threatened to make her grin like an idiot, and followed her escort with a stiff pace and a straight back. Never mind the fact that her head seemed to be trying its damndest to race circles around the rest of her; it had been doing that for long enough that it would be nothing short of pathetic for her not to have gotten used to it.

Far be this from her first venture out of the castle, away for more than a night from her parents. She was no innocent seedling. She'd been on her own a lot during the war – been completely alone more often than not, actually – but she was beginning to realize that this was the first time she was going to be spending a night in an unfamiliar bed of her own accord, with no impending disaster hanging over her head. This was also arguably the first time that her mind raced with happiness, not brain-numbing dread.

Her expressionless face did not stay expressionless long after she was introduced into her new suite, formerly that of Marth's absent sister. All Zelda could do when she saw the far wall of Ellis Lowell's bedroom was stare at it. Open-mouthed.

Apparently, in this country, the role of 'battle priestess' focused more on the 'battle' part. 'Priestess' was more of an afterthought, more of a 'maybe patch up some bruises, maybe cast a little magic if it's called for,' more of a 'holy Nayru, why am I wearing this ridiculously badass Crusader armor if all I have to do is sit back, wave a staff and keep out of trouble? Also is that a _sword_?'

Upon realizing that the tense atmosphere was not just in her imagination, Zelda turned around to find Kain ramrod-stiff in the doorway, looking just the way the room felt. Whatever he'd been waiting for standing there like a suit of armor, he apparently got, as he promptly dropped into a rigid bow, turned around and disappeared down the hallway.

She knew it was protocol, but she felt slightly hurt by his quick exit. Alarmed as well, which she _knew_ was not the way of things – but it was as if the weird fear-suppressing presence in her head had vanished along with her redheaded escort, without leaving a clue about how to get it back. Alone in this strange enormous room that did not belong to her, she felt very small and unsure – cowed not by the room itself, as it wasn't any more extravagant than what she was used to, but by the fact that her body was _welcoming_ this feeling of uneasy excitement rather than forcing it away. Not that that made it any less frightening.

At least sleeping would feel like falling into pudding. Trying out the bed was definitely the best way to divert her mind towards other things. She normally preferred hard mattresses, the kind that didn't give her backaches, but when something was this comfortable, one couldn't afford to be picky.

Now all she had to do was prepare for the culture shock. The public eye. She shuddered. What to wear, what to do, how to deal with those evil, distrustful citizens that had stared at her back in town. What to say to Marth, how to break the ice, how to go about getting to know him in a proper way…

Now that the pudding-mattress feeling was settling in, it struck her that sleeping was much easier. She'd do that now.

In his mind, Marth Lowell was, and had been for the last hour, cross-referencing the faces of every woman he could remember, from the early attendants and foreign princesses of his childhood to the Daein advisors of the present. He felt that his recall was quite thorough, which was why it perplexed him to find that no matter how he tried, none of those perfectly-remembered faces, all fine-boned and elegant, some the very definition of classical beauty, could even hope to compare to the one image he had of Zelda Harkinnian's smiling face.

The king of Daein was saying something about net exports.

The tiny white-haired Daein Army General sitting across from Marth seemed intent on contributing to his problem. God knew he wasn't reviewing her many physical appeals to bat an eye over how she'd gotten her position, but it was the truth – her nose was tiny, her eyes were huge and glistening, her hair was smooth, her body was like a nymph's. She was like a statue of a Roman goddess; if he were asked to describe a pretty face, he would picture hers and list her features one-by-one.

Zelda's nose, on the other hand… was beautiful. Her eyes were beautiful, her hair was beautiful. Her body he could imagine no other way, lean-muscled and athletic and goddamn _beautiful_, and if he didn't know better he'd say her skin absorbed sunlight, only to radiate it back out with enough force to blind him. If he were asked to describe _beauty_, something he could stare at forever and never feel he needed to change one bit, he would picture Zelda Harkinnian, and not say anything at all for fear of not doing her justice.

The king of Daein was saying something about inflation.

How was it that, searching through his entire life – one that had been quite frankly filled with women, whether he knew them personally or not – he could not find a single instance of a person that made him feel anywhere near as giddy as did this girl he had only just met a week ago? Marth had spent his life being the one man people were lucky to have met, the hero everyone aspired to know, the celebrity whose imperial hand people cut each other's throats to kiss. Now, he felt that he had grossly misjudged their feelings, and made light of an emotion that was actually very real. He felt _lucky_ to have met Zelda Harkinnian.

The king of Daein was saying something about price ceilings and tax controls.

… even _luckier_ to have her actually come all the way from Hyrule – without a protective duty, no less, meaning she had _defied_ her parents' wishes and left on her own – to stay in his home, in a suite not five doors away from his own.

Perfect. The woman who had awoken in him emotions he didn't even know he _had_, for whom he had just ignored an entire hour's worth of business agreements, was an armslength away, most likely bored out of her mind and possibly regretting making the trip at all, and here he was in a stuffy council room, not even paying attention to the thing that was taking away time better spent getting to know her.

The king of Daein was standing up. Why was the king of Daein standing up?

"I believe that's all." The other young ruler's voice rose slightly in volume as he ran a hand in thinly-veiled exasperation through curly ultramarine hair, and Marth took the cue as gracefully as he could, standing up to mirror his colleague as the senile fools around him nodded emphatically.

"Yes, thank you," he offered, inclining his head. "Thank you for making the trip, Pelleas. Our agreements should proceed much as we have outlined, should financial support from Pherae not meet with any issues."

Marth watched a devious smirk flit across Pelleas's mouth, an expression most unfit for the kind face. The jibe was clear as day. _You didn't hear a damn thing I just said._

Extracting himself from the conference room was easier than expected (mostly thanks to Pelleas's uncanny ability to sense that Marth was in a hurry and subsequent distracting of the others, using a method very similar to "look! A distraction!"). Evading Kain was even easier. Altea's premiere horseman was better at chasing game than people.

It seemed that his mind wasn't working with his feet. It was like rising to a challenge he had no idea how to deal with – the adrenaline was there, and his insides were squirming like he was on the hunt, but his mind was utterly blank. _Frighteningly_ blank. It was only getting worse as he got closer, and his legs were most definitely showing no signs of stopping.

He watched helplessly as the stairwell flashed by, then the double-doors, the high torches, then the kanji scrolls that his family liked to keep near the fourth-floor royal suites. Alongside him passed the familiar swords hung over his door, the black-and-gold-laquered treasures perched along the royal corridor, and below him stretched smooth bamboo, hiding the rough stonework of Castle Altea from noble feet…

Then all of a sudden, what was flashing by was neither ancient nor gold-wrought nor rich with precious Altean history.

At first he was mortified for not having made his presence known before entering a foreign princess's bedroom, and was prepared to knock his head on the floor apologizing, but as soon as he got a good view of Zelda's peacefully sleeping face buried amongst the feathery white sheets, breathing softly with nary a knit in her perfect brow, he couldn't find enough lucky stars to thank that he hadn't woken her up.

As he crouched by the bedside and shook her shoulder gently, it struck him faintly how it would look should someone enter suddenly and find him staring at a sleeping woman. "Princess," he said, and smiled as he watched her wake up.

"Can I meet your sister?" was the first thing she said, butchering the words with a wide, unprincesslike yawn as she blinked sleepily at him.

"I'm sorry I woke you, you must be tired… but the bath is down the hall, and my sister's toiletries should still be there, if you want to – "

He couldn't even figure out what had happened, but when he had, he just told himself he shouldn't have been surprised when the dainty Princess Hyrule jumped up with the force of a hurricane, grabbed his wrist and shot out the door with him in tow.

"You should know better," she grinned back at him as she pulled him into the hall. "You've got some nerve, telling a girl who's just sat two hours on horseback to visit you to _turn in early_."

She'd said 'visit you', he noted, and not 'visit Altea', but that was all he had time for before he had to run to keep up with her down the long corridor.

...

A/N: I used to feel bad cause this story wasn't going anywhere by chapter 4, but I totally don't anymore. Character development is important!


	5. Altea Proper

V.

_Altea Proper_

"I am seriously concerned about your sister's bed. It may be cursed. I swear it put me to sleep right as my head touched the pillow, and I was sleeping like a _dead woman_ until you came by. I mean, obviously the overcomfortable sheets had a lot to do with it, but having a shaman check it out could not do any harm."

"Didn't mean to disturb the sleep of the dead," Marth teased. "Maybe we should get you back."

Zelda pursed her lips, grabbed Marth's shoulder, wheeled him to face the other way and pointed at something in the distance, outlined in black against the dark blue sky. "Do you see that building? The big tall scary one?"

"Yes?"

"Have I seen it yet?"

"No."

"Then I'm not done, am I? Don't worry, I can take my licks."

Marth grinned. "That's the bell tower. We have about half an hour to get up there before the city goes dark."

Not that she knew what 'going dark' meant, as it was already dark enough for her to trip over things, but the thought of climbing up an enormous bell tower and seeing the entirety of Altea lit up like an urban marketplace was very inviting. Zelda ushered him off and they continued up through the alley.

Apparently, the Altean royal family shared her love of walking with the people. Before they'd left, Marth had rummaged through Ellis's closet (which she hadn't asked about, in case there was weirdness afoot), stopped off at his room to gather some things, and waited till they were both inconspicuously out of the castle via a back entrance to take shelter in a warehouse and break out the items he'd foraged. A quick change later, he'd emerged a grinning sloppy-haired commoner, crownless and capeless and altogether unroyal.

Zelda, overjoyed at the prospect of blending in at last, had followed suit so quickly that she'd forgotten to tie up her pants and remove the straw from her hair. After hiding their royal effects behind a haystack, they'd received odd stares from an old couple walking by. "Young love," the man had chuckled fondly to his wife. She'd blushed, but Marth hadn't heard.

"Central market," he said, and pulled her out into the open.

Her jaw dropped; so long after dark and the street was still lit up like a circus, lanterns burning and merchants shouting prices at the crowd. Rugs billowed in the wind, displayed behind jewelry and food and vases and strange little knick-knacks; across the way, accosted by what looked like dozens and dozens of people, was a stall that seemed close to exploding with the weight of the clothing it contained. _Altea has damn good fashion sense_ was all Zelda could think before Marth spoke, raising his voice above the din. "The cheaper vendors are on the east side of town, but this is where you can find pretty much anything."

He grinned, presumably at the amazed look on Zelda's face. She couldn't tell; she was busy staring. "Try the nectarines," he said. "No, seriously. Over here."

"You didn't tell me to bring _money_!"

Marth gave her a funny look. "No, I meant try one _after _I buy it for you." He grinned. "But it's funny that you thought you'd be buying… you know. Anything. While you were here."

"Get buying then!"

She began to push him towards a stall overflowing with fleshy red fruits. The vendor, a boy shouting his prices to the crowded street, smiled at them, and Marth laughed. "Such a gentlewoman you are, Zel. Always thinking of the other fellow."

"Other fellow, do you hear that price? Three gold! You'd have to buy six of those fruits to make up for the oneoverpriced apple _I'm_ going to treat you back in Hyrule. Din, if I knew this was going to be some kind of market heaven, I'd have brought a few extra purses." She eyed him suspiciously as he mysteriously produced money from somewhere in his pocketless vest. "Not going to haggle?"

"Uh. Sole ruler cheating his businesses does not a good market economy make."

"Right," Zelda grinned. "Didn't think that one through. I should stop doing that."

As Marth turned back and tossed her the fruit, Zelda felt like pointing out that the salesboy behind him looked like an owl with the way he was staring, apparently having heard the phrase 'sole ruler' and not knowing what to do with it. To this person, either a complete nutjob had emerged talking about grandiose delusions, or his one and only king was standing in front of him with dirt on his face, wearing commoner's clothes and talking to a strange blond woman in a country where Zelda appeared to be the only one. She didn't like either option, but since Marth didn't seem to be worried, she focused on the nectarine.

Zelda had barely taken a bite of what she decided might put her off Hylian fruit forever when, grinning, Marth took her wrist and pulled her alongside the stall, taking them out of the market boulevard and into another side-street. She looked back towards the flabbergasted vendor. "You confused that poor boy so much! I think he thinks you're crazy."

"I've been by that stall a good few times, he should be ashamed if he hasn't figured it out already. Fifteen minutes!"

"Fairly soon, I think, I'm going to ask you what you mean by 'going dark'."

They emerged into a courtyard, and immediately Zelda craned her neck upwards to look up the side of the tower suddenly looming before her. It crawled with ivy and yellow flowers, and the belfry was unlit, a blackened shape against stars and dark sky. The courtyard was peppered with soldiers with spears, and Zelda had just begun to estimate how many of them she could take out before having to make a run for it when Marth took her hand and began to lead her quickly around the perimeter. She ran up beside him as he flashed the nearest guard a cheerful smile.

"They don't look so tough," she said, exchanging suspicious glares with the same guard. "We can take two or three."

"All right. But just to be fair, we'll have to go on a joyride in Hyrule and maim a few of your citizens, to make up for it."

Zelda stuck out her lower lip as Marth glanced at her with a grin. "Point taken. Show me the back door, sir."

They had to weave in and out of a number of streets to get to the back wall of the spire. When they did, there were only two men standing guard, both of whom seemed to be textbook soldiers in the way that the sound of Zelda shrieking bloody murder in the next alley over made them both come running. In poor guard form, they took no notice while two people who could very well be up to no good sprinted past them and slipped into the base of the building, stopping along the way to make faces at their turned backs.

Later, when they were inside the bell tower, sniggering and looking with despair at the monstrous flight of stairs awaiting them, Marth told her that she made a very convincing victim. She hit and then thanked him.

She waltzed past him and sprinted. "Must be less than seven minutes now, right, till this creepy mysterious thing you call 'going dark'? Last one to the top jumps into the nearest haystack!"

"Maiming my people isn't enough, is it? Now you want to maim _me_?"

Zelda looked back at the sudden flash of movement, and her breath came out in a gasp of laughter as he muscled up the stairs two at a time, passing her. She pumped her legs and felt a wonderful burn of muscles not used in a long time, managed another few flights of cat-and-mouse before the shouting started to make her abdomen ache. "I changed my mind!" she gasped. "I'm looking to choke and die long before I even get to the top."

Marth was in bad shape too, but also grinning a grin that must be making his face hurt; he turned around, putting his hands on his knees and bending over panting as Zelda slowed down. "Five minutes! Maybe less!"

"One minute won't hurt!"

He shook his head and breathed deeply, looked to the top of the tower and jogged back down to her, bent down and put his arms around her shoulder and round behind her legs. Before she could rationalize what his plan was, he had lifted her up, staggered just a bit with a surprised grunt, and then turned around to run up the stairs. Her arms went reflexively around his neck. The bumpy ride made her squeal, euphoric with the bouncing feeling of being carried, trying not to let her boots fly off, giggling insanely and still out-of-breath as the grinding noises of the bell's mechanism began to echo through the hollow space.

"Oh Din!" she gasped, looking down over the edge of the staircase, towards the gears and pulleys glimmering below. "I don't want to die! You're going to fall over!"

He could only grunt in response, face red and looking like he had realized what a bad idea it had been to pick her up. He strained on; she laughed at his puffed cheeks and eyes set intently on the steps before him, and her head spun thinking _you swept me off my feet._

The landing came up before her eyes, and Marth yelped as he toppled over. Zelda felt the grip loosen and braced her arms against the ground that was suddenly rushing up to meet her; they sprawled across the stonework, and Zelda was up in an instant, bending down to grab Marth's arms and haul him to his feet. "Wipe that pained look off your face," she grinned, "I'm not that heavy."

"Are you – " he panted, and looked at her in disbelief. "Have you carried yourself lately?"

She cackled, and pulled him across the landing, around the bell suspended in the middle of the spire as it vibrated with a low whine. Marth stopped them at the opposite side of the tower, crouched down and felt blindly along the wall.

Zelda turned around to regard the bell, trying to shake the weird buzzing feeling the vibrations made in her fingers and jaw. "Hear that noise? I have this feeling that that bell is going to make our heads explode." She grinned at Marth, who looked back at her skeptically. "Just saying. You know that feeling that your brain's about to liquefy? Yeah, I'm thinking that's – "

"Let's not think gruesome death," Marth said, and swung open the shutter he had gotten unlocked. Zelda suddenly had no intention to anything but stare out the window, and he smiled. "Unless you see a haystack down there and simply can't control yourself."

The twinkling of many, many lights in many, many different shades of gold made her run to the tiny window and need to be restrained by Marth lest she topple straight through it. She put her hands on the wall and leaned out of the window, removing the tunnel-vision and turning her head in as many directions as it could go.

The city was bathed in light: bright kerosene pinpoints gleaming all over the city, in buildings, in gardens, in watchtowers along the city limits, all dotting the wide dark circle of Altea like stars. They flickered and fluctuated, all sizes, casting a white glow into the air that hovered like a cloud. The castle itself was lean and towering, the focal point of the city that towered leagues above the rest of Altea. Warm glows radiated from its windows, sprinkled across the spires, and Zelda's eyes couldn't seem to figure out what they wanted to see next.

She looked at Marth, smiling so hard her cheeks ached. The left side of his face was bathed in the pale glow of the city, his blue eyes were glimmering in the light, and she could swear he looked like the happiest man on Earth.

"I don't even know what to say." She reconsidered. "No, of course I do… what is that over there? The line of lit-up buildings. They look like towers."

Marth squinted out, following her pointed finger, and chuckled. "This is a nice story… those are trees. They're lit up like that because of something that happened in my father's time."

"Which was…?"

"A naval call-to-arms. Half the city was summoned to the front at Talis. We'd just been in some costly naval skirmishes, so the citizenry went up in arms protesting it…"

He looked out to the line of spires in the distance. "When our soldiers come back from naval war, they come back through the channel just beyond those trees, which lets out into the Verdane Strait. Because they could do nothing about my father's decision, everyone who was left brought lanterns and kerosene to the tops of those trees and made them into beacons."

He looked at her. "To guide home their husbands and wives, as a way of believing that they'd all return safely."

His expression was something she recognized immediately: being caught up in the ideal of something, swept away by its romanticism. She had a bit too much of that herself.

"Maybe I don't want to ask this, but… did it work?"

Marth's expression softened, and she felt awash with relief. "It worked, as much as something like that can. The conflict was settled just as our ships reached Talis, not a day before the fighting was to begin. We didn't lose a single soldier."

"Not often you get to hear a real live war story," Zelda chuckled. "From someone who was there to see it, too"

Marth settled back into the corner of the stone window, also smiling. "What are you talking about? You're practically a walking war story yourself."

"Well, depends on who you talk to, I guess."

He cocked his head, opened his mouth like he was about to speak, but all of a sudden there was an enormous rumbling, shaking the ground below them, seemingly from the very bottom of the tower, and Zelda's eyes flew open. She grabbed the window ledge and looked over at the bell. It was beginning to move.

"Now's about time for that head exploding business," she yelled over the rising noise, but Marth shook his head.

"Just cover your ears!"

She didn't need to be told twice. With a monstrous groan, the bell swung to the side; with a windup like a thunderclap, a deafening clang split the air, and the echo made her teeth rattle.

As it rang once, twice, the lights below began to flicker. And then, surprising her eyes and leaving glowing imprints dancing behind her eyelids, with the third clang of the bell, every single light in the entirety of Altea went out. She let out a gasp of surprise; everything was suddenly completely black, and she grabbed the window again to make sure it was still there.

"Wait, wait," Marth said in her ear, and she looked back outside at the endless expanse of darkness.

A few lights came on. If the kerosene lights had been small, these were tiny. They flickered more erratically, wavered and danced like the breeze might put them out. They were orange at first, but then more glimmered into existence, and they were blue, red, yellow… they moved like an ocean, and Zelda watched mesmerized as they slowly covered the city. It had been bustling before, the center of the world, but now it was quiet – the low hiss of fuel was gone, and the glowing spectrum below hovered like a pack of ghosts.

She understood now. Altea had gone dark.

"We use kerosene now, for most things," Marth said, "but at night we use fire. Lanterns and candles… pedestal-fires for squares and courtyards."

He laughed. "I'd like to say there's some great cultural reason for it, but it's really just to avoid wasting the fuel – "

Without thinking, Zelda stood up, removing herself from the window, and stuck out her hand. Marth looked up at her, and yelped in surprise when she pulled him up. All the could think about was that expanse of beautiful ghosts, people with lanterns respecting the night and moving through it unburdened by the hiss of man-made things. "I want to go down there."

He smiled, wide and easy, and Zelda marveled again at how she could have ever thought that this man had forgotten how to be happy. How could she have thought_ she_ had forgotten how to be happy? She felt him squeeze her hand tighter, laughed as the vibrations of the bell winding down made her feel short of breath and giddy, and sprinted down the steps behind him, refusing to let go.

The lanterns were made of paper. They hung together in clusters, lighting up the fronts of stalls and buildings and flickering with the wind. Where there weren't lanterns there were torches in brackets with tinder lit, and at every intersection there was a stone pedestal with flames bursting. Everywhere she walked she felt a warm glow on her face, felt the cobblestones and the dirt under her boots, looked at Altea bathed in soft orange light like she'd never looked at a city before.

There was nothing unnatural in the air. People talked and created a low whirr of conversation, sat at tables outside telling stories and bartered with vendors, and it was that contented cicada-hum of thousands of soft voices that made Zelda want to close her eyes and just listen.

This was a kingdom. This was a _home_. If ever she'd thought Altea was ordinary in any way, she took it back. These people were happy and their city was beautiful, and they had customs and rituals and delicious fruit, and it wasn't just because it was new that she loved it. Zelda finally knew what it was that Hyrule did not have.

"I used to go out into Hyrule's castle town," she said, looking at Marth as they walked. "Just like this. In peasant's clothes, with dirt on my face and everything…"

She trailed off and watched the ground. The thought circled in her head, and her senses fumbled trying to take everything she was seeing and make it into a word. Could she?

Marth bumped her shoulder with his. "And?"

"It's never been this alive. I've never seen _anything_ this alive."

"Alive?"

"It just… exists together," she said, "there's something here that almost… defies explanation. All I can say is that it doesn't make sense."

Her eyes went back to Marth, her brain working furiously to sort out everything she was seeing. "I can't believe this place has gone through so much. Hyrule doesn't even _remember _its war! My people have lived peacefully for as long as they can recall, and still they couldn't care about anything but themselves."

Her voice sounded helpless, even to her. She felt Marth grasp her arm, and let herself be led towards a bench. She sat down, grateful for the rest. "This kind of… connectedness… I never thought I'd see it."

"Zel, maybe it's _because_ we were in that war."

Elbows resting on his knees, Marth looked out across the street. Shadowed between two buildings, two children sat leaning against the walls, eating apples. "I was with them the whole time. We built this city back up with our own hands… so if there's one thing you can say about Alteans, it's that we all know that we owe our lives to each other."

His eyes came to her, brows knitted, and before he could speak Zelda leaned forward smiling and put her hands on his forearm. "Don't look like that! It's beautiful, not sad. I sound like I'm complaining, don't I?"

"No." Marth smiled. "You sound… amazed. Respectful."

"Good!" Zelda stood up and pulled him to his feet, a motion she had grown fond of. "Your city is rubbing off on me. And I'm pretty sure it's just what I need, actually – "

"Whoops."

He was looking behind her. She turned around, towards where a quartet of onlookers had gathered into a pointing, whispering circle. "Did we do something wrong? Wait…" She squinted, made out the features of the one nearest them. "Oh look! It's our friend from the fruit stall. We should run now, no?"

"We should."

She giggled. "I feel like we're dodging the castle guards."

"Oh, if the castle guards came along, we'd have to get serious. Rooftops are the least of it. I much prefer people who just stand there and point… they don't follow you. And if they do, it's very slowly and without creativity."

Under the gaze of the gathering crowd, they slipped away into the nearest side street, which she thought was a dead end until Marth seemingly pulled a spillway out of his pocket. Slipping into random crevasses and emerging in places both unlikely and convenient, he represented the very best of the peasant population's pathfinding skills.

"You make a very convincing street rat. And I mean that as the highest compliment."

"I hope you're referring to my eerily accurate sense of direction."

Zelda grinned. "Almost ninja-like, one might say. But not just that. You fit in, you know?"

Marth peered around a corner, seemed to decide better of it, and took them out into the opposite cross-street. "I did a fair bit of fighting in these streets, so I know my way around… and I picked up a few habits from my soldiers, enough to pass for a civilian."

"Yeah… me too, to some extent," Zelda said. Marth laughed, almost to himself, and stifled it almost immediately when she shot him a glare. "What! What's that for?"

"Nothing," he said, too quickly. He looked at her tentatively, lip caught under his upper teeth like he was putting all his self-control into not grinning. "I don't know. Never mind."

There was nothing wrong with her disguise. His might be better, what with all his mannerisms and the ability to just run a hand through his hair and have it be peasant-mussed, but he was mistaken if he thought she didn't look the part. "Tell me what's wrong with it!"

"There's nothing wrong with it. You just…"

If it hadn't been dark, Zelda would have sworn she saw him turn red. His face had the resigned silliness of a person who knew he was about to say something ridiculous. "You have a kind of… glow."

Zelda felt her smile swelling grossly, felt she might also be in danger of turning pink. Damned if it wasn't futile to pretend she was still offended. Marth was refusing to look at her, but the corner of his face that she could see told her that he was still grinning. She leaned around him. "… glow? Is that what you said? As in 'the fireflies glow at night', or – "

"That's right. You told me I smelled good. Now I'm going to tell you that you glow." Zelda's ears burned, and her stomach did flip-flops of anguish at the memory. "We will never speak of this again."

"Agreed. If anyone asks, we have never said anything to each other that was not totally normal and not creepy."

Marth stopped so swiftly that she had to bend over backwards to avoid a collision, turned around and dropped into a bow. He gestured to his right, towards a midsize wooden structure surrounded by paper lanterns nestled unassumingly between what Zelda could only assume were private residences. It reminded Zelda of a cottage in the woods, cozy and bathed in blue light. The aroma of warmth and chicken broth tickled her nose.

"Now what did I tell you?" she said. "I'm but a penniless pauper, haven't the means to pay for a meal!"

He didn't even answer, only rolled his eyes held out his arm.

If she had been in skirts, she would have smirked demurely, hiked them up and waltzed up the steps with all the entitled airs of a princess being invited to eat by a handsome peasant boy. Imagining it as she took Marth's arm looking into his happily smiling dirt-smudged face, she almost wished she _were_ in skirts. She'd never actually gotten over her stableboy fantasy.

Lurking somewhere deep in her brain, she felt, was the fact that – all on the same night – he'd bought her a fruit symbolic in Hyrule of love and sex, taken her to the precipice of a lonely belltower to watch something very similar to a sunset, told her she glowed, and was only now inviting her into a dimly-lit, snug-looking restaurant to buy her a dinner that would most likely be candlelit.

This is a date, her mind said numbly, happily, to her, but then it was too much to handle and she pushed it down.

A red-haired boy with a kind and mischievous face popped up not long after they chose a table, swiping round with cups of tea and water and hovering with a gleeful expression. Marth called him 'proprietor' when he greeted him, which seemed unlikely given that the kid could not possibly be older than a teenager, and the boy gave a toothy grin in response. "Good to see you, sir. Going all-out this week, aren't you?"

"I deserve an upgrade once in a while, don't I?" Marth replied, with the pensive poker face of someone playing along with a charade.

"Mm," the boy agreed with a zealous nod. "Right, I'm sure the cooks are just having a bad spell. You just can't trust those terrible royal chefs, don't even know which end of a butcher knife is the sharp one – "

"Jules, I'll give you a tip the size of your fist if you shut up and give us some food."

The red-haired boy stood straight and saluted smartly before doubling back and disappearing through the back entrance. Zelda cocked an eyebrow at Marth. "I'm getting a 'no love lost' vibe from you two."

Marth nodded at the swaying flaps covering the doorframe through which the boy had disappeared. "That's Julian – he's seen this getup a thousand times, I couldn't fool him if I grew a beard and shaved my head. He served with me in the war… the boy could kill a man with a set of lockpicks. Not to be trifled with."

"Ooh, look at you." Zelda grinned slyly. "Big strong war hero telling your stories. Did you two save fair maidens together? Conquer demonic overlords?"

Marth waved his cup at her. "You still haven't told me any of _your_ war stories."

"Hm, there are a few of those, aren't there? Actually, a lot of them involve me tying down my breasts and stuffing my crotch…"

Marth spit out his tea. Zelda laughed raucously as he gave a number of raspy coughs. "I'm sorry! That's another story. There are much better ones. About evil wizards and fish-people and time travel."

"… when will I hear the first story?"

Their corner of the restaurant erupted with her giggles. "Never. I went to some disturbing lengths to hide myself during that war, and if I can help it, you're never going to see them."

That wasn't true. At the risk of inflating her own ego, she wished fervently that whenever the time came that she had to slip back into her wartime disguise, Marth would be around to see it. In her pretty-princess gown she looked like a paper doll and glittered in all the right places, but dressed in that tight, faded Sheikah fabric with her hair wound in bandages and her joints wrapped in worn cloth, she looked _sexy._

Before long, Marth's cheerful redheaded war buddy swooped down with two steaming bowls. He gave Zelda a poorly concealed once-over, like he was noticing her for the first time, and he looked back at Marth with something between confusion and delight on his face. A smile twitched his mouth and his eyes twinkled, but Marth's glare made him scamper away.

She hovered in mid-conversation watching them, and felt like tens of thousands of wordless things were being said around her, about her… she'd seen that expression twice now, and it was so many things: gleeful, incredulous, even a little congratulatory. It could mean so many things. _I've never seen you with a girl. Best of luck to you! You finally opening up and spreading your wings, Highness?_

Wondering turned into worrying. _But I thought you learned not to cheat on your wife._ _Hey, congratulations on another notch in the bedpost. Wait a minute, I thought you were gay_

"I'm sorry," Marth said.

Zelda looked up at him to see him smiling, somewhat red in the face. You simply could not feign that sort of sheepish embarrassment. The visions of him with a secret wife or as a womanizing bigot vanished. "What for?"

"For the… ogling. That he did."

"Don't worry about it. I'm sure he didn't mean anything by it… and besides, you put a stop to it pretty quick, didn't you?" He flexed his muscles mock-heroically, so adorable with his innocent toothy smile and the hair that seemed to be eternally flopping into his eyes that she had to giggle.

She looked to the bowl before her, a deep-set blue ceramic dish of translucent red-gold broth and curled white noodles. A scent of warmth and salt and sweet green onions rose with the steam, and she leaned forward to inhale deeply. Eagerly she searched for something with which to eat, and narrowed her eyes at the table, which was bereft of anything but the bowls. "There must be utensils here somewhere. Give me a second, I'll find them."

Marth only grinned. "Time for some culture shock."

He lifted his hands with a flourish; as she looked on in disbelief, he took the bowl, and began to drink out of it with what must be the most disgusting noises Zelda had ever heard. Shocked at first, she didn't think she'd ever experienced a joy quite so huge and brimming as she took up her own bowl and dove into it face-first. She emerged with her chin dripping and saw him sitting across from her in the same state, and the last shreds of her royal etiquette broke like an old clock.

She may have seen Julian lurking behind the counter watching them, may have noticed the other patrons staring, but she didn't care. Laughter exploded from her throat, tears came down her face, and the only thing she could think about was the shaggy-haired, dirt-covered non-prince of a prince in front of her. Goddesses, was all she could think, this is the country for me. Her mind had tried to put doubts in her, as it was prone, and they were honestly probably still lurking there behind her conscious, but did it matter?

The laughing came to a gradual stop, and the contents of Zelda's bowl ended too quickly. The hours grew later as they managed to take up space in the tiny noodle house without getting kicked out – likely due to the owner's unwillingness to eject the crown prince from the premises – and soon, Zelda realized just how tired she was from the running and climbing and eating when she nearly swooned onto the table. Belly full and eyes half-lidded, she smiled widely at Marth and was ready at last to go back to the castle.

In a sleepy, euphoric haze, she parted ways with Marth, chased away personal servants, bathed in Ellis Lowell's grand stone-and-marble bathroom, and dressed in the slip and nightgown Kain had acquired for her during the day while Marth's smiling face said sweet things to her in the daze of her memory. Late at night, lying awake in bed with her mind buzzing with the weight of everything that was happening to her, Zelda's mind created scenarios and situations, scenes from their future – she saw them in the sun by Altea's harbor, saw herself jumping from the pier shouting in childish glee, pulling him with her into the water, saw them on a rooftop overlooking the market with a cloth blanket and bread and honey and a silly picnic basket, sitting above beautiful Altea and watching life happen around them. She needed this to go on, to last, for how long she didn't know – forever would be nice, but no need to think that far ahead.

_The sparring_, remembered her fuzzy mind, as sharply as it could in the moments before falling asleep. _That's why I came here. He asked me to spar._

In the morning, she decided, Marth would find her hovering over him at an absurdly early hour grinning widely with her hair dripping, ready to drag him out of bed and into the courtyard before his retainers and advisers could get to him and force him to do boring things. She'd take him away from the life that was suffocating both of them, the one that seemed to disappear when they were together. She would keep him there for as long as she could, as long as she dared, hoping secretly that he wouldn't remember that he was a prince with responsibilities to fulfill and people to lead – and if he did, that he would never realize that they were more important than she was.

...

A/N: There is actually a tournament in this story, and there are actually going to be characters other than these two, and it is all actually going to happen at some point I SWEAR.


	6. Dances with Swords

VI.

_Dances with Swords_

They circled. He bowed, she curtsied, and they both laughed at the ritual. He slashed the foil a few times to get back into the feel of the light blade and saw her do the same, hoped he wouldn't be too mesmerized by her weightless footwork to put up a decent fight.

She didn't give him time to stare before moving in gracefully; there was a slash, which he turned away, a parry, a thrust and a feint and a sudden lunge, and then he was on the ground –

Marth blinked. What was he doing on the ground?

Zelda's grinning face hovered into his view, silhouetted against the blue sky. Her thick braid swung down and tickled his nose. He felt a sneeze coming on, brushed feebly at the frayed golden hair, still quite unable to process the fact that he had just been knocked on his ass without even realizing it, and she giggled. "I love it when boys aren't afraid to lose."

"What are you talking about?" he retorted, feeling his face getting hot and wondering if it was normal to be this happy after being embarrassed in a swordfight. "… I tripped."

"Mm."

He took her hand with a grin and allowed himself to be pulled to his feet. He glanced at her arms; they were small, lean-muscled. Elegant. Hell, it might have even made him feel better to see them thick and sinewy, to find out that Princess Hyrule was secretly a bodybuilder and he just hadn't noticed – but apparently she was just a lot stronger than she looked. Where did she keep it?

She skipped back into her corner of the makeshift ring, braid swinging briskly, and spun on her heel to face him.

"Aw, does your bum hurt?" she teased, sweet smile gleaming as she squinted against the sunlight. Her skin was rosy and glowing around the blinding grin, and Marth had to fight not to stare, had to reteach himself how to look away.

"Yours is going to hurt a lot more, princess, don't make me come over there," he threatened, and loved every second of her raucous laughter.

The face was the same but this was a different person. He'd met a girl on the balcony of Harkinnian's castle, but her voice had been dull with misery; she'd looked like her crown was the heaviest thing in the world and dangled her wine glass like she'd wanted to smash it. She'd been thinly smiling, trussed up in a tiny pink dress, a china doll on display… this girl was different, completely free, a force of nature. On that balcony, the life had been sucked out of her, like the slightest movement would break her. Here, it seemed like the sheer force of her spirit might bowl him over.

She moved first. He was ready this time. He swung his shoulders to the side, and with a whoosh that made his hair flutter in front of his eyes, the fine tip of Zelda's rapier grazed by his nose – he grapevined one foot behind the other, put his sword hand behind his back, shifted his weight to the balls of his feet and slammed his right shoulder forward.

The impact was dull and solid, and Zelda was down instantly. She looked up at him in surprise, and he extended a hand, unable not to smirk.

"Now I've underestimated you, and you've underestimated me. Shall we begin?"

She grinned and blew the stray stands from where they dangled in her face. She didn't take his offered hand, which he expected. Instead she stood up effortlessly without using her hands, which he did _not _expect, and before he could react, her blade was flickering towards his abdomen.

He barely had time to remove his sword hand from behind his back to parry the lightning thrust; stepping away, he kept back with his guard foot forward, a purely defensive position. His mind had to advance through years of training to finally catch up to the level of Zelda's swordwork. The small things in her movements told him how intimately she knew the sport: the way she wrapped her fingers around the hilt, the balanced sway of the blade's tip, the tilt of her shoulders and the slant of her chest. Her stance was perfect. She had a style that was rough and instinctive, not like his straight-backed swagger – it was like she had picked it up naturally, or learned from someone who fought with raw body instead of rules.

She lunged, and he didn't see an opening; he flicked his wrist and struck the foil downwards, stepping to the right and mentally working out his advance. The disengage and winning thrust played out in his head, but Zelda suddenly moved forward, gliding her foil along his, and he had to think fast to bend his knee and allow the tip to pass harmlessly over the back of his calf.

Her left side was open now; with a few adjustments, he could still use the same advance and disengage, but again before he could begin the advance, Zelda moved. He was astounded by his own stupidity. An Altean sparring partner would have given a two-second grace period before beginning the next round of attack, but Zelda was already in position, and she was clearly_ not_ playing by the rules. She jabbed her right foot into the crook of his bent leg, and he was on his knees.

He couldn't remember the last time his mind had worked this fast and still lost. Fighting her was like fighting the war. Sudden and unexpected.

He angled his blade sharply upward, knocking hers out of the way, and got to his feet. To his surprise, she didn't just punch him in the face, like he was certain her lawless style would have demanded, and instead backed away, her legs bent lower than usual.

"Something wrong?" he asked, and she lowered the stance further. It became tenser, more defensive. She waited a few moments, as if waiting to see if something would happen.

Finally, she wrinkled her nose. "I want you to stop grinning."

"Huh?"

She waved the tip of her foil at him. "I said _stop grinning_. I just knocked you down and we're clearly on equal footing."

He chuckled. "So I am… I'm going to say this, Zelda: no one, except me, is ever going to beat you in a fencing match."

Her cheeks glowed rosily. "Psh! Except you, is it? Come on. I'll even give you a free shot."

He made no effort to make his offensive grin go away. Hell if he would fight on her charity. He wasted his 'free shot' with an open, obvious lunge, an obnoxious swing that made Zelda roll her eyes. She did the only thing that made sense: pursed her lips in exasperation and stepped aside. He let his reflexes take over as she jerked her wrist up; her quick stab, which would have hit him had he still been thinking about Altean rules of engagement, glossed harmlessly across his turned chest, and he ducked under her arm and came up behind her as she caught her balance. One step more and he was far enough to lay the point of his blade on the back of her neck.

"Wha – " came her breathless reply, and she spun around, clashing foils and throwing his aside.

He imagined he was looking rather more pleased with himself than was polite. Zelda blew a strand of hair out of her face – her braid was not doing well – and clicked her tongue. "I see how it is. One for one? Then it's my turn."

"I think the word you're looking for is '_touché_'."

"What's that?" She let loose a giggle that could belong to the devil, and advanced with what he had come to expect as no warning whatsoever.

Rounds flashed by, sudden spikes in exhilarating movement. His blood raced – from the sport? He didn't know. The adapter in him, the quick learner, absorbed her little quirks, memorized a certain twisting move of hers that always seemed to leave her defenseless and him watching like a fool with his mouth open. An instinct like this one, maybe less easily-distracted, had helped him survive the war. Zelda was learning too, but more slowly; as long as he made himself unpredictable, she came short of striking him.

That one maneuver came again, and he saw it begin as he had before. Her entire right side was utterly open, shamelessly, ridiculously open. And he could win this round, he really could, if he could just tear his eyes away from the wrong parts of her, if he could just goddamn _look away_ –

His body went to ridiculous lengths to get him out of the way. Steel flashed over his head and he went down, gracelessly, very much like a sack of bricks. Zelda came down with him, which he didn't understand until he realized she'd thought she had hurt him.

She stared down at him unblinking and pursed her lip, which was not enough to conceal the worry. "Goddess, that was a fall fit for… not a king. I hope your shin bones survived. Did they survive?"

His foil flashed from the ground to her sternum, and hers made an identical movement only a moment slower. The sun, directly overhead, framed her smile in a golden wispy spray as she knelt over him with her sword at his throat. "Twenty minutes ago, you never would have pulled a sneaky move like that! I am so proud."

He could barely formulate a response, floored by both her sword and the pressure of trying not to notice how easy it would be just to tilt his body and crane his neck up and –

"So am I," he said, squinting up into her face, proud of how steady and non-lecherous his voice sounded. "There are two ways this could have gone: either you could have followed my rules, or I could have followed yours… and since rules apparently don't _exist_ where you come from – " She punctuated him with another demonic giggle that was in no way sympathetic, and he gave a disapproving sigh. "My teacher would roll in his grave if he saw me now… have I mentioned how there are no rules?"

"Rules aren't worth it." Zelda withdrew her sword and settled back on her heels, extending a hand to pull him up. The gap widened, and Marth's breath returned; they remained sitting, both still panting slightly. "They mean nothing… might even be handicaps."

She looked shrewdly into his eyes, as if peering at him over severe glasses, the wiry sinew of her fighting stance still relaxing back into her muscles. "For example… war. No rules there, are there?"

She was right – although it showed, probably more clearly than she'd intended, the attachment she still had to those seven years of her life. There was strategy in conflict, cunning and wisdom, but no rules to speak of. He'd already noticed it: how, when confronted with her fighting style, his body had thrown back three years, adopted the strategies of kill-or-be-killed that had kept him alive through the battlefields that had once been Altea's countryside. In those days he'd learned that the only way to get through it was to close your eyes and forget that the world you lived in had once been filled with civilized people, commanded by laws not to slaughter each other for power or control.

Not that fighting Zelda had been _exactly_ like that. It was more like going wild in a market after forgetting that stealing was illegal.

"True enough," he said. "Rules make things predictable. I suppose the one who wins is the one who takes the other by surprise."

"Only reason I'm still sitting here," Zelda said with a sardonic chuckle.

"But Zel," Marth said, "the way I see it, that's exactly why we need them _now_, when there is no war." Zelda cocked her head, and he took it as an invitation. "On a battlefield, you're like an animal – and you have to be. Why would anyone choose to be predictable when it can get you killed? To follow rules of battle, engagement, whatever?"

"Still with you there."

"But what about when it's over?"

Her eyebrows went up in surprise. "What about it? Why go back to rules when the _lack _of them is the only thing that's ever done you any good?"

"Because they make war different from peace. Maybe not in such clear terms, but… to me, that feeling of lawlessness is something that happens when civilization fails. And when civilization succeeds, when people aren't _killing_ each other for stupid reasons… rules are the only things that keep it that way." His eyes drifted to the belltowers of Altea in the distance. "It's probably why my people demanded a Parliament after the reconstruction. Laws provide stability after war takes it away."

He turned and smiled at her, hoping that looking at her would not, as it had been doing for the past day and a half, make him completely lose what he was about to say. "And I don't care if it sounds sad and pathetic. But it can help people like us forget the feeling of fighting. The… barbarism."

Zelda's pensive face burst into a very sad, but very understanding, smile, and she sat forwards with her knees drawn up, putting herself much, much closer and scrambling Marth's brains – _probably_ unintentionally. "You know, I think I finally know where the difference is."

"What's that?"

"You _want_, one-hundred percent, to forget."

The surprise came too quickly for Marth to master it, so it showed fully on his face. Somehow, unnoticed amidst all the movement, his hand was on top of hers. "Yeah, I should think… a war is a war. People die, and it hurts."

"I want to forget too," she said softly, and Marth suddenly felt like an ass. "It was seven years of watching people I loved getting hurt, watching the place I swore to protect slowly being destroyed. I'd give anything for it to have never happened."

She looked down, her arms linked under her legs, drawing them up closer to herself in the involuntary gesture of a veteran remembering the ache of war. Marth's conscience began to hammer at his chest; if she was in pain remembering something she didn't want to remember, it told him, then it was his fault for bringing it up and he should be stabbed twice for every bad memory she experienced.

"War isn't just for suffering," Zelda said, and Marth managed to lift himself out of guilt long enough to match her gaze. She was looking at him with intensity now, her eyes bright with the calm after the storm. "It's a process. There are lessons in it. Just like it taught me to trust my instincts, and not the rules. It needed to teach Hyrule…" She searched in frustration for the words. "I don't know. _Solidarity_. What it's like to be Hyrulian, not just a bunch of people killing their neighbors for the land."

She was suddenly on her feet, her foil forgotten on the ground. Marth allowed her to pull him to his feet, letting his own weapon clatter to rest beside hers. "Remember last night, in town?" she asked quietly, her hands on his shoulders as she faced him towards the belltower they'd climbed yesterday. "I couldn't even describe what I felt, but… I ended up calling it _connectedness_, which is probably the closest the English language can get to it…"

She released his shoulders, coming up beside him and looking out towards the gentle slope of all Altea's buildings and towers. "Your entire country remembers what it was like to stand together. Even if they all try to forget the pain, they'll remember it anyway. They'll remember what it means to be countrymen."

This Zelda, Marth thought in wonder, was not world-weary Zelda, not bright and chipper Zelda who liked to talk trash, or Zelda glowing by candlelight. This was Zelda with ideals and expectations; she was romantic and passionate and utterly swept up in her ideas. Hearing her made him feel like a scholar, a student, a lover, all at once. _This _was the future queen of Hyrule, and he wondered if she knew it.

"That's a lesson my people need to learn," she murmured. "Without it, they'll forget that there are things bigger than Hyrule out there, and they'll start looking inwards for things to covet, for things to want and fight over. Remembering the Temporal War is the only thing that might be able to keep them together."

She looked down. "So I've got to think… when my entire country is in danger of forgetting it, doesn't it become my responsibility to remember?"

Confronted with the knowledge that all of Hyrule was apparently feverish and prone to amnesia, Marth opened and closed his mouth three times before finally deciding what question he wanted to ask. "Forgetting? Did I hear that right?"

Zelda's next look in his direction was devious and smiling with only traces of sadness, which sent relief through his gut. "You did."

He frowned. "I know you said it yesterday too, that no one in Hyrule actually remembers the war, but… I'm getting the feeling there's a lot I don't understand about this Temporal War."

Zelda threw back her head and laughed as if the thought of his head spinning trying to understand something called the 'Temporal War' was the funniest thing in the world. "Oh, Marth, don't think yourself in circles. It takes people a few weeks of solid reading on the subject to make sense of the whole ordeal… I'll give you a history lesson some time. After all, I am kind of a walking primary document."

"Can we wait till I have a pen and paper? I think a timeline might be beneficial. Visual learner, you know."

"Hope you know your timeline is going to look like a spiderweb," she grinned.

Zelda doubled back to face Altea castle, gazing up at its massive towers with a sigh as she laced her fingers, straight-armed behind her back. Keeping his eyes firmly on her face as she stretched and refusing to let them wander, Marth suspected that his peripheral vision was getting a lot of practice today.

"I wonder if I'll think differently once I have six-hundred-seventy-four-thousand square kilometers of my very own country to look after," she mused. "Maybe it's like having a baby, yeah? View's different from the other side of the rulership."

"I don't know about that… some days I still have fantasies of leaving my kingdom on some stranger's doorstep and just getting it over with."

Zelda's laugh was musical again, light and easy again, and she looked at him biting her lower lip, her eyes twinkling. Finally, she said, "This started out as us talking about fencing, didn't it?"

"Even better. This started out as us _actually fencing_."

"Oh yeah," she said with a grin, swooping down to pick up both foils and skirting out of reach before he could so much as squawk his protest. "Rules suck."

She swiped at him when he dove to retrieve his sword, and after repulsing him with a few double-handed slashes, spun on her heel and danced away. He realized a second later that her feet were close together, her body was at a jaunty angle and she had absolutely no interest in further sparring – or maybe she was just taking this no-rules thing to a whole new level. He couldn't afford to be tricked again.

"You know, I didn't hold back at all," she grinned, "not like with my nursemaid back home. And I figure you didn't either. So… thanks."

He found that the shyness of her smile, framed by the wispy remains of what had once been a smart-looking braid, suddenly meant something completely different to him. There was a certain magic in the moments between strangers at the beginning of a friendship, but it was _nothing_ compared to feeling that perhaps he knew Zelda Harkinnian a tiny bit better than he had an hour ago.

"Holding back is for people I know I can beat. People clearly not you." He braced his back foot against the floor and saw her react immediately, tensing her arms and lowering her torso slightly. A moment sooner than he'd planned, he moved, reaching over her and towards the bellguard of his foil. She spun almost fully around and loosed an earsplitting shriek, tangling their arms in an effort to protect her property; they both dissolved into giggles long before she let him pry the weapon back from her.

Marth airslashed with his rescued weapon, only partly to show off the fact that he had finally gotten it back. "I still can't believe I shot my mouth off and told you I was going to beat you."

"Oh, there's still time," she teased. "I could be your nemesis, locked in stalemate till fortune favors the luckier… or, you know, the one who practices harder."

"You know, that may not be a bad idea, Zel. Once upon a time my nemesis was a giant black lizard who told me he lived in the evil place in my heart, but I think the position's open now."

"Well, I plan to live in the good place in your heart. Means I'll live longer."

Two more very short rounds whistled by, one point to each, before Zelda was willing to admit she was getting hungry. The sun had just fallen out of its late-afternoon position when Marth finally slid his foil into its sheathing belt, mopping his face with his sleeve and finger-combing his hair back from where it was beginning to stick to his face. "Kain's probably made up a list of errands as long as my leg by now."

"Ooh, my redheaded friend. What errands are those?"

"Letters, requests, whatever comes in," Marth explained. "He usually saves them for me when I'm off doing unkingly things. It's not his job, but he gets antsy when there's no information flow."

"Tell him he should look into hacking."

Marth turned towards the spires of the castle and cupped his hands over his mouth, calling into the wide expanse of shrubbery and marble walls that separated them from the castle grounds; the distant granite made it echo back to them. "Kain! I know you're there!"

Fastening her sheathing belt around her waist, Zelda looked first at the castle, and then back at Marth. It wasn't until she'd redone the laces on her boots that a returning call floated waveringly over the grounds. "Coming," it said.

Zelda's eyes widened. "Wow… he really was there. How did you know?"

"I didn't. I just do it anyway. If he's not there, then I feel silly for a few seconds, but if he is, then it looks like I'm psychic."

Kain's face resembled the color of his hair by the time they met him halfway. He bowed, which Marth found unsettling until he remembered that Zelda was a Hyrulian princess and Kain harbored a crippling fear of foreign royalty.

"Milord," he said, and Marth noted with pleasure that he obviously still hadn't figured out how his prince could somehow always sense his presence. He might have felt bad if he hadn't been quite so convinced that Kain had been crouching behind that shrubbery for the past hour to spy on him. "Milord, would you like the briefing now or at a later time?"

Looking sympathetically at the weird, stiff posture of his closest retainer, Marth decided it would be too complicated to just tell Kain right now that Zelda was the last person for whom he should try to dress up his speech. "Anything pressing?"

"Actually, Milord, you have a caller waiting back at the castle. A traveler arrived a half hour ago asking for an audience. I put him in the drawing room and told him you would return within the hour."

Zelda raised her eyebrows. "Seems like Altea castle is a popular stop for the weary wayfarer. People do this often?"

"Actually, they don't." Marth was having a hard time concealing his own puzzlement. Until Zelda had shown up so miraculously the day before, Altea castle had remained relatively bereft of impromptu visitors. Those who wished for an audience usually sent envoys in advance, arranged meetings in secrecy, sent carrier birds – any number of measures to avoid surprises. "Kain, did you ask what he wanted?"

He swore Kain's eyes flickered to Zelda for a split second before returning to him. His reply was guarded in a way that Marth hoped only he could recognize as subtly mistrustful. "He hails from the Kingdom of Hyrule. He claimed envoyship of King Harkinnian – not quite in those words, or at all as eloquently, but I managed to grasp his meaning. Eventually. He also recognized the crest on the bridle of Princess Hyrule's mount as I took him round to the stableboy entrance."

Marth could see the surprise turn to dread on Zelda's face. Her fears danced plainly over her eyes: here was a soldier sent to take her away, an agent of her father commanded to escort her back to Hyrule. He knew she was here, he'd seen Zelda's horse grazing in Altean stables, so she couldn't hide. It was painfully obvious now – he'd been so happy to see her that he hadn't questioned the legality of the sole Hyrulian heir appearing so suddenly, so alone. She would be punished for leaving the country without the permission of the King. Locked away in a tower, never to emerge again. Except into King Harkinnian's torturous social gatherings, which would realistically allow him to _see_ her again, at least, once every two years –

"Marth," she said, her voice knotted with worry as she tried to smile. "I want you to know that if you're charged with kidnapping… I am going to be _extremely_ torn up about it."

The joke only seemed to make her more nervous. Wars had been started over smaller things.

"Thanks for the charity, Zel," he said, unsure how well he was hiding it himself. "I guess we'd better go see what he wants. Lead the way, Kain."

...

A/N: Touchy-feely philosophical conjecturing 'R Us... less of that in the future. Also, to anyone coming here from an alert: the prior chapters have been modestly improved/rewritten. Also, give me a holler so I can apologize personally for being such a flake and never writing this story ever ^.^'


End file.
